Knowing the law
070 PC Carole Mumsey
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1. Mary: Can you explain what your job is? What exactly is your job?
2. Carole: Well, my role is Student Liaison Officer. So I have responsibility for crime prevention and personal safety for students in Leeds, particularly those who are living and studying away from home.
3. Mary: Right.
4. Carole: So, I give crime advice, crime prevention advice, to all those students and through a lot of the media that I can find.
5. Mary: Right, okay. So you give crime prevention advice. So would that involve going in and talking to a big group of students, maybe at the beginning of the year?
6. Carole: It can do.
7. Mary: Right.
8. Carole: Certainly I've given talks to international students.
9. Mary: Right.
10. Carole: And it's been very interesting to have feedback from them about how they perceive the police.
11. Mary: Right.
12. Carole: And how they see our role in society, which is often very different to what it actually is because I know that a lot of the international students come from very different cultures.
13. Mary: Right.
14. Carole: And some expect us to have guns on us and some expect us, you know, to be quite ruthless on the streets and some find us quite intimidating. Whereas really, we are representatives of society and we're here just to keep law and order.
15. Mary: Okay. So when you say your role in society, you see that primarily to represent and to keep law and order?
16. Carole: It is, yes. I mean, the police try to represent society inasmuch as we have certain levels of male and female officers of ethnic minority officers and, whilst it's fair to say that still the vast majority are, or the majority are white male, nevertheless, we're increasing and trying to increase the numbers of female officers and officers from, or people from, other ethnic minority groups.
17. Mary: Right, okay. And what else does your role involve?
18. Carole: Crime prevention and personal safety advice.
19. Mary: Right.
20. Carole: So, yes, I'll go out and give talks to students.
21. Mary: Right.
22. Carole: I attend a lot of events that the universities have. And when I say the universities, I'm talking particularly Leeds University and Leeds Metropolitan University.
23. The vast majority of my time is taken up answering questions from students. So I hold a drop-in session at Unipol once a week and students are able to come and speak to me about any questions that they have.
24. Mary: Right.
25. Carole: But the majority of enquiries that I get from students are from them either sending me emails or ringing me; ringing me direct. And I'll deal with those issues, sometimes about crimes that they've reported and they're not sure what's happening or what they should be doing, or something's happened and they don't know where to go for help. And whilst I don't deal with all of the crimes, I deal with some crimes against students, but not the majority because there's so many it would be impossible for me to deal with them all by myself.
26. Mary: Right.
27. Carole: But I can give advice.
28. Mary: Right.
29. Carole: On where they can go for help.
30. Mary: Right.
31. Carole: And point them in the right direction.
32. Mary: What are the main concerns that students come to you with?
33. Carole: The main concerns that the students have are about crimes that happen against them.
34. Mary: Right.
35. Carole: And generally they don't consider it a concern until it happens.
36. Mary: Okay.
37. Carole: So, I have students who've been burgled and they want to know what to do about it, or they've been robbed and they want to know how to prevent it happening again.
38. The other people who contact me often via the universities that I get in touch with are permanent residents in the communities.
39. Mary: Right.
40. Carole: So, Headingley, Hyde Park, those sorts of areas where there's a high student population and the people who live there who have families and regular jobs find it difficult with the noise and the hours that the students keep.
41. Mary: Right.
42. Carole: And, obviously, with Headingley particularly, over the last few years used to be nice sort of homely pubs where people could go and have a quiet drink, whereas now they're the more student orientated bars and there is a lot of noise. A lot of the students will go into Leeds city centre to enjoy themselves and then come home. Maybe create a bit of noise coming home, but nobody expected that, but it's all the time now because they are drinking in Headingley.
43. When we have those problems, then I go and try and iron out some of the issues between them.
44. Mary: Right. So you're there to support and give advice to the students, but also, to an extent to liaise with other members of the community as well?
45. Carole: Yeah, yes. I am very much. And one of the issues that I keep trying to press towards students is that, now that they're living away from home, this is their new home.
46. Mary: Right.
47. Carole: Leeds is their home and they have a responsibility towards the people who live here all the time just to respect the area where they live and to treat it as they would like their own homes to be treated. And, whilst they might be just renting flats with other students in one house, they have to treat that as their own house. Treat it as they would their parents home and look after it. Because sometimes, at the end of the academic term, they all leave, go home and the state that some of these houses are left in is horrendous and then the landlords are left to clear up the mess.
48. So it's all about teaching the students to respect property, to respect other people and to try and live in a community with people just as they would in their own towns or villages where they come from.
49. Mary: So you mentioned their noise you mentioned before and you mentioned litter and bins and just the appearance of the area.
50. Carole: Hmm.
51. Mary: Are those some of the key issues that people come to you with?
52. Carole: I think they are the major issues. Noise is the one that comes up time and time again, and drunken behaviour.
53. Mary: Right.
54. Carole: So we're talking minor antisocial behaviour. And certainly some of the students who live in halls of residence, quite often the universities will get in touch with me and I'll go and have a word with the students and say, you know, "This can't continue. This has to stop." And even in private rented, you know, accommodation, if they neighbours get in touch with me, I'll go and knock on the door and say, you know, "This has to stop, otherwise action will be taken against you."
55. Mary: Right, right. And what kind of action could be taken against people, say if it's very noisy, for example?
56. Carole: Well, if we're looking at noise, first of all the Environmental Health can come and monitor the noise and if it gets to a certain excess then they can put them before the courts. They could take court action and confiscate all their music equipment.
57. Mary: Right.
58. Carole: Anti-social behaviour, I can be up to the level of arresting people and them getting criminal records. Which, at the end of the day, they might as well not have been bothered coming to university because if they're going to get a criminal record, the chances of them getting a job are much reduced.
59. Mary: Right.
60. Carole: So it's about educating students about that. Letting them know what the consequences of their behaviour are so that, hopefully, it will stop. And if not, then I will come in and take action against them.
61. Mary: I think that's really interesting because I know sometimes people say, "Oh, well I've got a noisy neighbour, or whatever, but what can I do and what will happen?" So it's useful and interesting to know.
62. Carole: Yeah. And also, in relation to noise, another consequence is a tenancy agreement. They are in breach of their tenancy agreement if they don't respect the neighbours.
63. Mary: Right. Right, okay. Interesting. Interesting.
64. Carole: So, they take that one on board as well.
65. So, there's kind of two faces to my role, really. I'm trying to be the nice, you know, approachable police officer that people will come and ask for advice for and I'll do what I can to help them. But, at the end of the day, if they, you know..
66. Mary: If they step over the line.
67. Carole: .... if they step over that line and commit criminal offences, well, then I and my colleagues will come in and deal with them.
68. Mary: Thank you. Does that go for most of our students or for most students in FE College, the neighbourhood police will be the people that they would see out on the beat that they'd come into contact with?
69. Carole: Yeah. The vast majority of people who you will come into contact with on the street now are foot beat officers who are Police Community Support Officers. Not actually Police Officers.
70. Mary: Right.
71. Carole: And they are identified slightly differently. They have blues ties.
72. Mary: Right.
73. Carole: And blue epaulettes on their jumpers.
74. Mary: Right.
75. Carole: And they have blue band around the hat as well.
76. Mary: Right, okay.
77. Carole: And the men rather than wearing the tall hats they have flat caps, but with the blue band around it.
78. Mary: Oh right. Yes.
79. Carole: So they're slightly different.
80. Mary: Right.
81. Carole: They work alongside us. They have the same radios that we use.
82. Mary: Right.
83. Carole: So they have contact, radio contact, with the police.
84. Mary: Yes, yes.
85. Carole: In fact, they work from the same office that I work from.
86. Mary: Hmm-uh.
87. Carole: But they're not actually police officers. So whilst they can stop people and ask them their details, they don't have a power of search, so they can't search people.
88. Mary: Right.
89. Carole: And they don't have power of arrest, but they can detain people.
90. Mary: Right.
91. Carole: For a length of time until police officers come to make the arrest. So they have more powers than a normal person on the street would have, but not as many powers as police officers have. So they're supported by us very much.
92. Mary: Right. Can you tell us what powers police officers have?
93. Carole: Basically we have powers within England and Wales.
94. Mary: Right.
95. Carole: The Scottish law is different and the Scottish police have different powers.
96. Mary: Hmm-uh.
97. Carole: Special Constables who are unpaid police officers have powers in the division, sorry, in the police force that they work and the surrounding forces.
98. Mary: Right.
99. Carole: So they can step just outside their own force and they will still have power.
100. Mary: Right.
101. Carole: But regular police officers have powers throughout the whole of England and Wales.
102. Mary: Right, okay.
103. Carole: Those powers include being able to stop people on the street.
104. Mary: Right.
105. Carole: Ask their names, address, date of birth; their details.
106. Mary: Right, right.
107. Carole: To be able to arrest people for criminal offences.
108. Mary: Right.
109. Carole: Be able to search people on the street.
110. Mary: Hmm-uh.
111. Carole: And, obviously, within the search we will always try to do a male on male and a female on female. So it's not always possible, but certainly if we're doing more intimate searches, then that would definitely be.
112. Mary: Yes.
113. Carole: And if we do, sometimes we do a slightly more intimate search on the street for drugs, in particular, or maybe for weapons, and then we'd be looking to have a police van to come up and we do it in the back of a police van with the door closed, and it would definitely be sort of male on male or female on female.
114. Mary: Hmm-uh. So can you tell us then what's the most important skill that a Police Officer needs?
115. Carole: Most of the work that we do, whilst we do have powers, most of it is to do with talking to people and communication. It's more about skills than powers, really.
116. Mary: Yes.
117. Carole: So, we do have those powers to deal with things that we need to, but everything else is about skill and, particularly, communication.
118. Mary: Hmm-uh.
119. Carole: And most instances, even, you know, fights on the street that we deal with, again, the perpetrator of the fight might get arrested, but everybody else, because there's always a crowd of people that hang around, and it's about communicating to people and talking to them and moving people on. And that's the biggest skill that we use.
120. Mary: Hmm-uh, absolutely. Diffusing the situation.
121. Carole: Yeah, yeah.
1. Mary: Can you explain what your job is? What exactly is your job?
2. Carole: Well, my role is Student Liaison Officer. So I have responsibility for crime prevention and personal safety for students in Leeds, particularly those who are living and studying away from home.
3. Mary: Right.
4. Carole: So, I give crime advice, crime prevention advice, to all those students and through a lot of the media that I can find.
5. Mary: Right, okay. So you give crime prevention advice. So would that involve going in and talking to a big group of students, maybe at the beginning of the year?
6. Carole: It can do.
7. Mary: Right.
8. Carole: Certainly I've given talks to international students.
9. Mary: Right.
10. Carole: And it's been very interesting to have feedback from them about how they perceive the police.
11. Mary: Right.
12. Carole: And how they see our role in society, which is often very different to what it actually is because I know that a lot of the international students come from very different cultures.
13. Mary: Right.
14. Carole: And some expect us to have guns on us and some expect us, you know, to be quite ruthless on the streets and some find us quite intimidating. Whereas really, we are representatives of society and we're here just to keep law and order.
15. Mary: Okay. So when you say your role in society, you see that primarily to represent and to keep law and order?
16. Carole: It is, yes. I mean, the police try to represent society inasmuch as we have certain levels of male and female officers of ethnic minority officers and, whilst it's fair to say that still the vast majority are, or the majority are white male, nevertheless, we're increasing and trying to increase the numbers of female officers and officers from, or people from, other ethnic minority groups.
17. Mary: Right, okay. And what else does your role involve?
18. Carole: Crime prevention and personal safety advice.
19. Mary: Right.
20. Carole: So, yes, I'll go out and give talks to students.
21. Mary: Right.
22. Carole: I attend a lot of events that the universities have. And when I say the universities, I'm talking particularly Leeds University and Leeds Metropolitan University.
23. The vast majority of my time is taken up answering questions from students. So I hold a drop-in session at Unipol once a week and students are able to come and speak to me about any questions that they have.
24. Mary: Right.
25. Carole: But the majority of enquiries that I get from students are from them either sending me emails or ringing me; ringing me direct. And I'll deal with those issues, sometimes about crimes that they've reported and they're not sure what's happening or what they should be doing, or something's happened and they don't know where to go for help. And whilst I don't deal with all of the crimes, I deal with some crimes against students, but not the majority because there's so many it would be impossible for me to deal with them all by myself.
26. Mary: Right.
27. Carole: But I can give advice.
28. Mary: Right.
29. Carole: On where they can go for help.
30. Mary: Right.
31. Carole: And point them in the right direction.
32. Mary: What are the main concerns that students come to you with?
33. Carole: The main concerns that the students have are about crimes that happen against them.
34. Mary: Right.
35. Carole: And generally they don't consider it a concern until it happens.
36. Mary: Okay.
37. Carole: So, I have students who've been burgled and they want to know what to do about it, or they've been robbed and they want to know how to prevent it happening again.
38. The other people who contact me often via the universities that I get in touch with are permanent residents in the communities.
39. Mary: Right.
40. Carole: So, Headingley, Hyde Park, those sorts of areas where there's a high student population and the people who live there who have families and regular jobs find it difficult with the noise and the hours that the students keep.
41. Mary: Right.
42. Carole: And, obviously, with Headingley particularly, over the last few years used to be nice sort of homely pubs where people could go and have a quiet drink, whereas now they're the more student orientated bars and there is a lot of noise. A lot of the students will go into Leeds city centre to enjoy themselves and then come home. Maybe create a bit of noise coming home, but nobody expected that, but it's all the time now because they are drinking in Headingley.
43. When we have those problems, then I go and try and iron out some of the issues between them.
44. Mary: Right. So you're there to support and give advice to the students, but also, to an extent to liaise with other members of the community as well?
45. Carole: Yeah, yes. I am very much. And one of the issues that I keep trying to press towards students is that, now that they're living away from home, this is their new home.
46. Mary: Right.
47. Carole: Leeds is their home and they have a responsibility towards the people who live here all the time just to respect the area where they live and to treat it as they would like their own homes to be treated. And, whilst they might be just renting flats with other students in one house, they have to treat that as their own house. Treat it as they would their parents home and look after it. Because sometimes, at the end of the academic term, they all leave, go home and the state that some of these houses are left in is horrendous and then the landlords are left to clear up the mess.
48. So it's all about teaching the students to respect property, to respect other people and to try and live in a community with people just as they would in their own towns or villages where they come from.
49. Mary: So you mentioned their noise you mentioned before and you mentioned litter and bins and just the appearance of the area.
50. Carole: Hmm.
51. Mary: Are those some of the key issues that people come to you with?
52. Carole: I think they are the major issues. Noise is the one that comes up time and time again, and drunken behaviour.
53. Mary: Right.
54. Carole: So we're talking minor antisocial behaviour. And certainly some of the students who live in halls of residence, quite often the universities will get in touch with me and I'll go and have a word with the students and say, you know, "This can't continue. This has to stop." And even in private rented, you know, accommodation, if they neighbours get in touch with me, I'll go and knock on the door and say, you know, "This has to stop, otherwise action will be taken against you."
55. Mary: Right, right. And what kind of action could be taken against people, say if it's very noisy, for example?
56. Carole: Well, if we're looking at noise, first of all the Environmental Health can come and monitor the noise and if it gets to a certain excess then they can put them before the courts. They could take court action and confiscate all their music equipment.
57. Mary: Right.
58. Carole: Anti-social behaviour, I can be up to the level of arresting people and them getting criminal records. Which, at the end of the day, they might as well not have been bothered coming to university because if they're going to get a criminal record, the chances of them getting a job are much reduced.
59. Mary: Right.
60. Carole: So it's about educating students about that. Letting them know what the consequences of their behaviour are so that, hopefully, it will stop. And if not, then I will come in and take action against them.
61. Mary: I think that's really interesting because I know sometimes people say, "Oh, well I've got a noisy neighbour, or whatever, but what can I do and what will happen?" So it's useful and interesting to know.
62. Carole: Yeah. And also, in relation to noise, another consequence is a tenancy agreement. They are in breach of their tenancy agreement if they don't respect the neighbours.
63. Mary: Right. Right, okay. Interesting. Interesting.
64. Carole: So, they take that one on board as well.
65. So, there's kind of two faces to my role, really. I'm trying to be the nice, you know, approachable police officer that people will come and ask for advice for and I'll do what I can to help them. But, at the end of the day, if they, you know..
66. Mary: If they step over the line.
67. Carole: .... if they step over that line and commit criminal offences, well, then I and my colleagues will come in and deal with them.
68. Mary: Thank you. Does that go for most of our students or for most students in FE College, the neighbourhood police will be the people that they would see out on the beat that they'd come into contact with?
69. Carole: Yeah. The vast majority of people who you will come into contact with on the street now are foot beat officers who are Police Community Support Officers. Not actually Police Officers.
70. Mary: Right.
71. Carole: And they are identified slightly differently. They have blues ties.
72. Mary: Right.
73. Carole: And blue epaulettes on their jumpers.
74. Mary: Right.
75. Carole: And they have blue band around the hat as well.
76. Mary: Right, okay.
77. Carole: And the men rather than wearing the tall hats they have flat caps, but with the blue band around it.
78. Mary: Oh right. Yes.
79. Carole: So they're slightly different.
80. Mary: Right.
81. Carole: They work alongside us. They have the same radios that we use.
82. Mary: Right.
83. Carole: So they have contact, radio contact, with the police.
84. Mary: Yes, yes.
85. Carole: In fact, they work from the same office that I work from.
86. Mary: Hmm-uh.
87. Carole: But they're not actually police officers. So whilst they can stop people and ask them their details, they don't have a power of search, so they can't search people.
88. Mary: Right.
89. Carole: And they don't have power of arrest, but they can detain people.
90. Mary: Right.
91. Carole: For a length of time until police officers come to make the arrest. So they have more powers than a normal person on the street would have, but not as many powers as police officers have. So they're supported by us very much.
92. Mary: Right. Can you tell us what powers police officers have?
93. Carole: Basically we have powers within England and Wales.
94. Mary: Right.
95. Carole: The Scottish law is different and the Scottish police have different powers.
96. Mary: Hmm-uh.
97. Carole: Special Constables who are unpaid police officers have powers in the division, sorry, in the police force that they work and the surrounding forces.
98. Mary: Right.
99. Carole: So they can step just outside their own force and they will still have power.
100. Mary: Right.
101. Carole: But regular police officers have powers throughout the whole of England and Wales.
102. Mary: Right, okay.
103. Carole: Those powers include being able to stop people on the street.
104. Mary: Right.
105. Carole: Ask their names, address, date of birth; their details.
106. Mary: Right, right.
107. Carole: To be able to arrest people for criminal offences.
108. Mary: Right.
109. Carole: Be able to search people on the street.
110. Mary: Hmm-uh.
111. Carole: And, obviously, within the search we will always try to do a male on male and a female on female. So it's not always possible, but certainly if we're doing more intimate searches, then that would definitely be.
112. Mary: Yes.
113. Carole: And if we do, sometimes we do a slightly more intimate search on the street for drugs, in particular, or maybe for weapons, and then we'd be looking to have a police van to come up and we do it in the back of a police van with the door closed, and it would definitely be sort of male on male or female on female.
114. Mary: Hmm-uh. So can you tell us then what's the most important skill that a Police Officer needs?
115. Carole: Most of the work that we do, whilst we do have powers, most of it is to do with talking to people and communication. It's more about skills than powers, really.
116. Mary: Yes.
117. Carole: So, we do have those powers to deal with things that we need to, but everything else is about skill and, particularly, communication.
118. Mary: Hmm-uh.
119. Carole: And most instances, even, you know, fights on the street that we deal with, again, the perpetrator of the fight might get arrested, but everybody else, because there's always a crowd of people that hang around, and it's about communicating to people and talking to them and moving people on. And that's the biggest skill that we use.
120. Mary: Hmm-uh, absolutely. Diffusing the situation.
121. Carole: Yeah, yeah.
The words removed below are the key words used most by this speaker.
arrest behaviour crimes criminal ethnic male noise noisy powers prevention ringing Scottish tenancy Wales
arrest behaviour crimes criminal ethnic male noise noisy powers prevention ringing Scottish tenancy Wales
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